http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/kpmcinto/faulty.html
Description: In Faulty, you play as a piece of security machinery whose threat-recognition software is malfunctioning. As a computer you cannot sense anything beyond what is placed in front of your scanner, you cannot ask for clarification, and you cannot make choices outside of those you were programmed to make. You can however attempt to use your limited sentience to correctly identify objects whose dimensions are scanned in, and try to avoid the scrap heap, or deliberately let in objects that could be threatening to cause havoc in the building.
Just from a user interface standpoint it’s a little weird to have no access to a restart button or anything similar. Interesting usage of trying to get the user to figure out what the items are, though.
Wasn’t able to find any endings other than “day ends” or “it’s a pipe bomb! yaaay!” Day ending seems a little abrupt, but the overall concept is demonstrated pretty well.
I love the visual styling of the game. The green text on a black background, especially at the beginning where the text ‘moves down’, gives the game a machine-like feel that fits perfectly. Conceptually, I appreciate what you’re trying to do; but as the player I just ended up clicking ‘threat’ or ‘no threat’ at random to see what would happen. The ending with the pipe bomb was pretty funny (so that’s what those two cylinders were), but other than that it’s kind of hard to parse the text and figure out what the objects are supposed to be. I guess maybe they’re not supposed to be anything, only the pipe bomb is significant, but it feels like you could have had more endings or done more with the other objects (unless I’m missing something).
I think when I read your idea I was confused about how this could work but this is brilliant! very clever and funny. I love the point of view you placed your reader in.
Where did you get the dimensions from or did you make it up?
I really liked the styling of the game, definitely immerses the player into the role. On my first run, I just randomly clicked threat or not threat arbitrarily and ended up killing everyone with the pipe bomb, but on my second run through I tried to parse what everything actually was. I appreciated the syntax you presented the descriptions with because they generally made sense if you tried imagining it.
I agree that the visuals are fantastic – the minimalist approach fits the idea of an old computer well. I found that the choices didn’t promote much meaningful input from the player, and it felt less like a CYOA than a puzzle game. One idea that might be beyond the scope of the project would be to give additional ways to understand the object, such as ‘Use infrared’ or ‘Measure weight’.
Looks great but it feels like you sacrificed time making the UI interesting and measuring objects. The story was rather straight forward. There were only 3 endings from what I saw and for all the effort of seeing the same screen 3 times before the game actually starts, its a disappointment. Great aesthetics, not much depth. But there is a lot of potential.
I decided before I started playing that rectangles were not threatening, and cylinders were threatening. Aerosol anyone? It turns out that I was right (at least I think). Great visuals, and I wanna second the idea of finding more ways to learn about the objects
It really does work well with the format. I got the sense that the scanner data was the only data that I as the “program” had about the outside world.
Love what you did for the page style, and it works great without the menu. It’s pretty fun to guess what the object is according to the size, it would be nice if I can know some other arguments, such as arguments related to materials.
Very ambitious idea. A bit too cryptic and quick. I agree with some of the comments above, multiple levels of reading besides the shape (composition, contain fluids etc) and the possibility to focus on certain objects in the bag (maybe under the constrain of a limited number “moves”), could make this very interesting.